The Last Witnesses

Father Patrick Desbois is on a mission to record eyewitness testimony about every Holocaust-era mass grave site in Eastern Europe. But his efforts have taken on a new urgency

Thursday, September 13, 2018

What began 16 years ago as a straightforward effort to document Nazi war crimes has taken on a new urgency. Not only is the generation that lived through the Holocaust passing away, Holocaust denial is on the rise, entrapping many young Jews who know distressingly little about their history and heritage (Photos: Yahad In-Unum archives, Brett Frager, Joelle Elbassy)

Some people turn to religion to escape from reality.

Father Patrick Desbois, a Catholic priest from France, isn’t one of them. For the past 16 years, he has been doggedly documenting a reality that many would like to forget or deny: the Holocaust. His goal is to document every single incident that occurred in what he calls the “Holocaust by Bullets,” the killing of Jews and Roma (Gypsies) by Nazi death squads.

To date, he has visited more than 2,000 cities and villages in Eastern Europe and interviewed some 5,800 non-Jews who witnessed the slaughter. Along the way, he has founded a nonprofit research organization dedicated to preserving and disseminating his findings, Yahad In-Unum — the Hebrew and Latin phrase means “Together, in One”; written an award-winning book; been featured on television news programs such as 60 Minutes; and been honored with a slew of humanitarian awards.

But even though he is approaching the age when many people retire, he shows no signs of slowing down or resting on his laurels. He is too haunted by yet another fear: death. Most of the people who witnessed the crimes have either already passed away or are now in their nineties. With more than a million killings still waiting to be documented, he is, literally, in a race against time.

The summer of 2018 therefore found him once again on the road, as he continued his search for the last witnesses — the frail nonagenarians who still remember, the only ones left who are able to testify about the tragic events they saw with their own eyes.

Father Desbois usually travels with a team of professional researchers, translators, and cameramen, who help him record the lengthy interviews he conducts in the field. These filmed interviews form the basis of Yahad’s Archives and Research Center (CERRESE), which can be accessed by academics conducting Holocaust-related research. But for two days in July he joined a tour to Ukraine and Poland organized by Heritage Retreats, a kiruv organization founded 19 years ago by Rabbi Mordechai Kreitenberg, which Mishpacha was invited to join as well.

While the goal of Heritage Retreats is to introduce assimilated young Jews to intensive Torah learning and open their eyes to their rich Jewish heritage, Rabbi Kreitenberg saw in Father Desbois’s work yet another way to wake up the pintele Yid in their slumbering souls.

"Our current privileged status in North America has weakened our collective memory, but Father Desbois’s work has a message that’s compelling for all sorts of Jews,” says Rabbi Kreitenberg. “If a Catholic priest has dedicated his life to uncovering truths about the Holocaust, shouldn’t we care about our Jewish heritage and history too?”

Unquiet in the Ukraine

“I knew people were being killed. I heard shooting. But I didn’t see it. It was happening behind the wall. I did see three young men who were hanging from a balcony”

—Lydia, Lviv

The first witness we meet is Lydia. (Yahad doesn’t publicize the last names of the people who agree to be interviewed.) Still vivacious at 90, Lydia doesn’t live in Lviv anymore. But she lived near the city’s Jewish ghetto during the war, and she agreed to return to Lviv to share her memories. A Ukrainian member of the Yahad team, Olga, translates for us.

Lydia tells us that before the war there were many Jews who lived on her street — craftsmen, doctors, and lawyers. That changed when the Germans arrived in the summer of 1941 and the ghetto was established. Because she and her family lived near the ghetto, the teenager had a front-row seat, so to speak, to the new reality imposed upon her former neighbors.

“I saw Jews leave the ghetto to go to the workshops where they made shoes and clothes. The Jews wore stars. They were young and middle-aged men. People could hear them from far away, because they wore wooden shoes, which clattered on the cobblestones.”

I try to imagine the sound of those clattering shoes in the early-morning hours. It isn’t easy. Lviv, at least in its historic center, is a picture-perfect city. The buildings, painted in delicate hues of cream, pink, and yellow, exude an old-world charm, as do the quaint cobblestone streets. The immaculate city squares are filled with people enjoying a midday meal in an outdoor café or simply soaking up the sun. (Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 727)